‘Alaska Weather’ show will halt TV broadcast in July, raising concerns among many rural Alaskans

A long-running television show unique to Alaska that provides detailed weather, aviation and marine forecasts across the state will stop airing at the end of June.

Meteorologists are looking for ways to keep the program available, especially in rural communities where many residents rely on the show for weather and safety information that’s vital to coordinating flights and planning subsistence hunts or commercial fishing trips.

The half-hour “Alaska Weather” show, produced by Alaska Public Media and the National Weather Service, has been broadcast statewide since 1976. In May, the weather service announced that Alaska Public Media would no longer be able to distribute the show, a decision that Alaska Public attributes to financial constraints.

The last broadcast will take place Friday. Starting July 1, the National Weather Service will share a modified version of the program on its YouTube channel, said Scott Lindsey, regional director for the weather service.

He expects the change to have the biggest impact on Alaskans in rural areas with intermittent internet.

“That show, especially with a marine focus and an aviation focus, in rural Alaska is the only thing that some folks have access to. Broadband internet isn’t available everywhere,” Lindsey said. “We know that it will be an impact.”

Mariners, pilots, hunters and snowmachiners in rural Alaska watch the show regularly to plan outdoor activities in accordance with changing weather, Unalakleet commercial fisherman and subsistence hunter Jeff Erickson said.

“Most of us are all hunters and commercial fishermen, so weather is important to us,” he said. “Good weather forecasting is life and death for a lot of the stuff we do because a lot of times, we’re doing it in the middle of winter.”

With limited broadband, ‘Alaska Weather’ on TV was it for many

Alaska Public Media doesn’t have data on the show’s viewers, said Linda Wei, the chief content officer for the station. But every day, between 200 and 450 people tune into the YouTube version of the show — fewer on quiet weather days and more on days with extreme weather conditions, said Carrie Haisley, chief of emergency services for the weather service in Anchorage.

While the show’s audience includes people in the Anchorage Bowl, many viewers live in remote communities and don’t have a lot of other ways to get information, she said.

“While the promise of fiber is coming online for some of our communities, it’s not there yet,” said Karen Pletnikoff, community environment and safety manager at Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association. She spoke earlier this month during the Alaska Federation of Natives’ listening session about the changes to the show. “There will always be a difference between what some families can afford and what other families can’t.”

[Residents hit by rural Alaska fiber network outage pivot to satellite internet, analog operations]

Vic Fisher, a host at KUCB public radio in Unalaska, records the “Alaska Weather” program every day and shares the material with listeners. He said the programming has been critical, especially on days with significant storms and hazardous weather approaching — such as when the remnants of the powerful Typhoon Merbok slammed a vast swath of coastal Western Alaska last September.

Discontinuing the show will be a loss to the community, he said.

“If they get rid of it, I will certainly miss it. And I don’t want them to get rid of it,” Fisher said. “Bring it back!”

Erickson, from Unalakleet, said that he used to watch the show daily as well. While his family now has access to stronger Wi-Fi to get weather information online, Erickson said he still prefers “Alaska Weather” because he can see an actual meteorologist instead of trusting an app.

While the satellite and fiber connectivity is improving in his region, Erickson said some Unalakleet residents still rely on the Alaska Rural Communication System, a satellite-connected broadcast system operated by Alaska Public Media that provides free television and radio programming.

“Within a village, there’s just a real varying degree of connectivity. And between villages, it’s really, really a big difference,” he said. “It continues to improve, but it’s not there yet. There’s still lots of people that don’t have cellphones, communities that don’t have good cell service.”

For fishermen, hunters and pilots, forecasts are crucial

Decisions around when to set the net, go out fishing or hunting, gather berries, and recreate all depend on the weather forecast, Erickson said. That’s why the breakdown of winds and waves provided by “Alaska Weather” is so important, he said.

“It will depend, you know, whether we fish or we don’t fish, whether we go hunting or we don’t go hunting, or whether we make a camping trip on the coast. Some of it is pretty critical,” Erickson said. “But then a lot of it is just comfort, you know — are you going to take the kids out? Are we going out for two or three days? Do we take little ones, old ones? So, everything we do is much more predicated on weather than maybe in most places.”

Weather information has become even more critical for subsistence hunters in recent years because climate patterns are becoming less predictable, said Morris Nashoanak, former mayor of Stebbins. The village is getting less snow, more rain and variable ice conditions — which he said can be a hazard for spring seal hunting.

“Majority of people usually sit and wait for the ‘Alaska Weather’ reports,” Nashoanak said. “I’m worried about the younger generation. ... Without that information, they might endanger themselves.”

The “Alaska Weather” show is one of the few sources on television that provides an aviation forecast.

Tom George, a pilot and Alaska regional manager at the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, watches the show to get the statewide forecast for the next few days and develop a general idea about whether conditions are good enough to fly in. Then he can start in-depth flight planning with the help of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Flight Service program.

“This is very helpful to the aviation community, to either realize that it’s going to be bad for the next couple of days, so don’t even worry about trying to make a flight,” he said, “or conversely, to see that there’s a storm coming in a few days so it’s maybe best to actually take care of a certain project now rather than wait.”

The show provides aviators with such critical information as wildfire smoke affecting visibility and future weather conditions for mountain passes — a feature unique to Alaska forecasting, said Marshall Severson, a retired FAA air traffic control specialist and a board member at the Alaska Aviation Safety Foundation.

“Waiting on weather in Nome, I would tune in every evening to ‘Alaska Weather,’” said Severson, who has been an aviator for about 40 years. “I have made, you know, go or no-go decisions based on my understanding of what’s going to be happening from the forecast.

“We do consider it a safety issue to terminate this broadcast,” he said.

The end of the show

The National Weather Service and Alaska Public Media have co-produced “Alaska Weather” for more than 47 years, Haisley said.

The program was originally a twin of “AM Weather,” another weather service broadcast in Washington, D.C., which ended in 1995.

Now, “no other National Weather Service offices produce any kind of broadcast for TV,” Haisley said.

To create “Alaska Weather” at first, meteorologists would go to Alaska Public Media’s office to record the show live. Since 2017, they’ve been sending the prerecorded video clips to Alaska Public Media for assembling and distribution. The show is then broadcast on other media outlets, such as KUAC in Fairbanks and KTOO in Juneau.

Alaska Public Media decided to discontinue “Alaska Weather” because the station does not have direct funding to assemble, edit and distribute the program — a process that takes about two hours daily, Wei said.

“We couldn’t come up with the appropriate amount of funds to sustain the efforts that we’re going into right now,” Wei said. “It’s ultimately a business decision.”

After the show is discontinued on television, the National Weather Service will keep recording daily videos and share them on its YouTube channel. The weather information will still be broadcast through NOAA Weather Radio, and marine forecasts will continue to be available over the phone through the “Alaska Weather” Information Line at 1-855-937-4977 and online.

The weather service is also examining other options to distribute information — for example, by broadcasting a modified version of the show on local radio stations. The agency has invited Alaskans to share what way would be convenient for them to get weather updates. So far, the weather service has received about 100 comments, Haisley said.

“The theme in the comments is that people are disappointed just as we are,” Haisley said. “There’s a lot of concern that YouTube is not the best solution for rural Alaska, where broadband is not widely available or affordable for everybody.”

People can email nws.service-changecomments@noaa.gov through July 30 to submit comments on what sources of climate information they use, what information is lacking and how the change to “Alaska Weather” broadcasting might affect them.